High School

Sportsmanship wins the day at cross country race With video report BY ROGER CLEAVELAND REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

In distance, it was only a few hundred yards.

But Sacred Heart's Maryn Vaillancourt and Amistad Academy's Kayla Samuel went a long way toward showing what sportsmanship is all about.

The final portion of the state Class S girls cross country championship for Vaillancourt and Samuel last Saturday at East Hartford's Wickham Park exhibited everything that high school athletics should.

As Vaillancourt prepared to turn the course's final corner, she stepped awkwardly on a tree root and severely rolled an ankle. She hopped on her good foot a couple times and began crying.

"With the pain of rolling my ankle, and I get overheated so I can't breathe, so I was a little afraid of that," she said. "So I just started to walk to calm myself down. I was going to walk the rest of the way because I was almost there."

As Vaillancourt gathered herself for a painful walk to the finish, Samuel ran by and noticed the Sacred Heart girl hobbling and crying. She linked arms with Vaillancourt to give her support and told her she wasn't going to leave her behind.

"She could have very easily just gone by me and gotten her place, but instead she stopped to help me and encourage me," Vaillancourt said. "I didn't exect anyone to even stop for me or slow down. One girl asked me if I was OK and said to just to stay there and she would go get someone when she finished. But I wasn't going to stay there because I wanted to finish. It was just so unexpected of (Samuel) to help me."

Samuel said it just seemed like the right thing to do.

"Everyone was passing her," Samuel said. "And it was near the end, so everyone was there. ... You are finally at the end, and then something bad happens and you can't finish. So I wanted to help her."

Vaillancourt believes she could have walked the rest of the way, but it was an uplifting experience to run to the finish with Samuel's aid.

"I helped her with my arm, but I also had to keep shouting encouraging words like, 'Keep going. Keep going. You can do it. We are almost there.'" Samuel said. "Then toward the end when we were almost there, there was a clock with our time. I was saying, 'Just look at the time. You're doing really good. Just look at the time.' She finally just let go of my arm and just pushed on."

As they neared the finish line, Vaillancourt told Samuel to sprint ahead. She felt Samuel deserved to finish ahead of her, but the junior from New Haven would have no part of it. Vaillancourt finished 133rd out of 150 runners in 28:29 over the 3.1-mile course. Samuel was 134th, officially one second behind.

"I said thank you. I gave her a hug, and then we went our separate ways," Vaillancourt said.

Samuel said Amistad promotes the importance of family, and she felt compelled to exhibit compassion.

"It is not just for my team or my friends who I run with," she said. "It is also the other people that I meet along the way. We are all in this together, so we have to finish together.

"If I would have went in front of (Vaillancourt), that would have defeated the purpose of it. I helped her to encourage her and put her in a place where she feels confident. To just help her halfway and say, 'OK I'm going to leave you now and make sure I finish in a strong place,' that's just not good."

Vaillancourt's mother, Kristen, who wasn't at the race, cried when Maryn texted her about Samuel's act of sportsmanship. As her mom heard more details and wrote about it on her Facebook page, she was encouraged by friends to let others know about the good deed.

Wednesday afternoon, she drove Maryn to Amistad to let the girls spend time together, thank Samuel and give her a bouquet of flowers and a framed picture of the two girls running arm-in-arm toward the finish line.

"I got so emotional that somebody would put my daughter first and let all those other kids pass her when she didn't have to," Kristen Vaillancourt said. "It was a state meet, so it was a big meet. But she held onto her, ran with her and encouraged her the whole way. Then at the finish line she pushed her ahead of her. You don't hear stuff like that. It's incredible.

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